Rachel Gibby
Pembrokeshire County Council
In Pembrokeshire we have a growing retirement and older person’s population and like most of the UK challenging times for recruitment and retention of staff into the care sector all contributing to growing waiting lists.
In a recent survey by West Wales Care Partnership asking staff in care what are their top motivating factors for applying for a job in care, whilst the highest was pay and benefits, the other top reasons were rewarding and varied work; increased job satisfaction; and promotion and progression.
The commissioning team within Pembrokeshire County Council have also anecdotally been informed that lone working and the feeling of isolation of people working in domiciliary care services is a barrier both within recruiting and retention of staff and sometimes a contributor to people seeking to leave the industry.
The Project:
The project looked at developing innovative actions around shared priorities, working differently by collaborating to make the most of all skills and resources and doing what is needed.
Project Outcomes:
We were anticipating the following outcomes:
- Enhanced skills development for staff
- Improvement on ‘do only what is needed – no more, no less- and do no harm’ staff undertaking role equivalent to their roles.
- Reductions in travel time.
- Improvements on the resident’s experience of care.
- Improvement on well-being of staff.
- Reduction in waiting list.
Project Impact:
This project is still ongoing.
The impact so far is the opportunity for team managers and staff to explore different approaches to delivering care and how we can support staff differently, working with Social Care Wales and Care Inspectorate Wales.
Development of recruitment marketing and promotion tools.
Using the learning from COVID-19 pandemic redeployment programme.
